15 year old worn-out carpet in a jewellery shop workshop is worth thousands of pounds because it is covered in specks of precious metals.
A worn-out carpet in a jewellery shop workshop in Jersey is worth over £13,000 because it was covered in specks of gold, platinum and silver. The family run workshop carpet had been fitted for over 15 years it was situated near seven goldsmith workstations where the craftsmen create beautiful bespoke jewellery using precious metals.
Richard and Julie Blampied, who run Aurum Jewellers in St Helier, Jersey, sent the carpet to a bullion merchants where it was burned. Richard explains, ‘The carpet is cleaned once a week, but with people walking over it all day there is quite a bit of dust that is trodden into it which doesn’t come out through normal cleaning. So when we replace the carpet we send it off to the bullion merchants who then return the value of the metals found in the carpet to us.
After chatting to our staff, we decided that this time we would like to donate the money to charity. It’s not money that we have lost or missed out on. So we launched a competition in November to the Jersey community to guess the value of the metals found in the carpet, with the total being paid to a local charity of the winner’s choice.’
Cleaned by Mastermelt in London, the precious metals were extracted by a special machine and weighed and the value was well of £13,000.
Katie McFarlane, who guessed that there would be £12,450 worth of dust embedded in the carpet, was the winner and chose to donate the money to Jersey Hospice Care.
Georgie Mabbs, marketing manager at Aurum of Jersey, said “I was staggered by the amount of money we received for our workshop carpet. I was also delighted to hear that Richard and Julie had decided to donate the money to charity.”
